¹ The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York, n.d.), p. 109Google Scholar.

² The Communist Manifesto (New York, 1932), pp. 17–19Google Scholar.

³ The philosophical significance of this identification is explored in Marcuse, Herbert, Reason and Revolution (New York, 1941), pp. 287–295Google Scholar.

⁴ I should add that Marx made a keen analysis of the relation betwen social stratification and politics in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, especially with reference to the urban groups supporting the coup d'état. He also gave a completely misleading interpretation of the Paris Commune, which he identified as a model of the coming proletarian revolution. The contrast between these two discussions illustrates Marx's genius as well as his propagandists dogmatism. Cf. the recent analysis of the Commune by Kransberg, Melvin, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871 (Ithaca, 1950), esp. pp. 179–183Google Scholar, where the author shows convincingly that the social radicalism of the Parisian workers was in large part the result of a patriotism which had been intensely frustrated by the Prussian siege of the capital and by the indecision of the middle class and the authorities in the face of this threat.

⁵ A striking analysis of the background factors in India, Southeast Asia, and China is contained in Boeke, J. D., The Interests of the Voiceless Far East (Leyden, 1948)Google Scholar. The conflict between Marxian class theory and the facts of social stratification has been analyzed with great acumen by Mitrany, David in Marx Against the Peasant (Chapel Hill, 1951.)Google Scholar See especially the following summary comment of the author: “The startling fact is that Communism has only come to power where by all Marxist tenets it might have been least expected that it could. In every instance, from 1917 in Russia to 1949 in China, Communism has ridden to victory on the back of disaffected peasantries; in no instance has it come near to victory in industrialized ‘proletarian’ countries. So far it has always been a ‘proletarian’ revolution without a proletariat; a matter of Communist management of peasant discontent. But while this shows that in the countries where this has happened the peasants were ripe for revolt, it does not show that they inclined to Communism. As regards eastern Europe at any rate, the evidence is all the other way” (pp. 205–206).

⁶ Cf. the papers on class conflict by Marshall, T. H., Robbins, Lionel and Dobb, Maurice in Marshall, T. H. (ed.), Class Conflict and Social Stratification (London, 1938)Google Scholar.

⁷ The Conditions of Economic Progress (2nd ed., London, 1950)Google Scholar. The recent critique of Clark's work by Bauer, P. T. and Yaney, B. S., “Economic Progress and Occupational Distribution”, Economic Journal, Vol. 61, pp. 741–755 (Dec., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains some useful reservations concerning Clark's tripartite division of the occupational structure, but it does not invalidate Clark's contribution as the authors believe. A more striking critique of this work is contained in. Jewkes, John, “The Growth of World Industry”, Oxford Economic Papers, Vol. 3, pp. 1–15 (Feb. 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ In a recent study of public opinion, 76 per cent of the national sample indicated their belief that the good effects of big business outweighed the bad. Breakdowns of the sample revealed no significant differences between various occupational groups. See the report of the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, Big Business from the Viewpoint of the Public (Ann Arbor, 1951), p. 179Google Scholar.

⁹ The development from “civil rights” to “social rights” has been traced by Marshall, T. H. in Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge [Eng.], 1950), pp. 1–85Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Of course, the belief in this possibility of prediction has had major historic significance as an effective ideology, quite apart from any appraisal of its validity.

¹¹ These contradictions have been explored by Rosenberg, Harold in “The Pathos of the Proletariat”, Kenyon Review, Vol. 11, pp. 595–629 (1949)Google Scholar.

¹² There is one interpretation of the relations between economic interests, social stratification and political power which is not retrospective. Through their analyses of “pressure groups,” political scientists have made us well aware of the plethora of organizations whose economic and political interests are explicitly formulated and pressed upon legislatures and the general public with all available means. I suggest that in these cases the problem examined in this paper does not arise. Once the economy and its corresponding social structure have given rise to an articulation of interests and to an implementation of these interests through organizations, the problem has become one for political analysis proper. The question of the political sociologist is which of the existing antagonisms in society will give rise to organizations that participate in the struggle for power, and it is obviously answered once these organizations exist. The question which then remains for him is the pertinent one as to how stable any given articulation of interests (with their organizational implementation) is. It is, of course, precisely the fact that any present articulation of interests is unstable, and that the tendency to think and act alike among commonly situated men may in the future give rise to a new articulation of interests (and find expression in new organizational action), which is of major interest to the political sociologist. It was the merit of Marxian analysis, as I have suggested, to have focussed attention on this instability of the social structure.

¹³ Yet, historical studies often imply a contrary view; they lend themselves to a retrospective determinism, which regards the outcome of all political action as predetermined because in looking back we can understand the reasons for this and no other outcome. The danger of ex post facto explanations is obviously that they make every political action appear as if no alternative actions had been possible.

¹⁴ Michels, Robert, “Proletariat und Bourgeoisie in der sozialistischen Bewegung Italiens”, Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. 21, pp. 379–380 (1905)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Cf. the comments on this question in Beer, M., Fifty Years of International Socialism (London, 1937), pp. 103–107Google Scholar. Also Michels, Robert, Political Parties (Glencoe, 1949), pp. 235–267Google Scholar. The contemporary significance of this problem is clearly stated by Watnick, Morris, “The Appeal of Communism to the People of Underdeveloped Areas”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 1, pp. 22–36 (March, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Heberle, Rudof, From Democracy to Nazism (Baton Rouge, 1945), esp. pp. 90–120Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Cf. Ehrmann, Henry, “The French Peasant and Communism”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 46, pp. 19–43 (March, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Though large-scale immigration has ceased since the 1920's, the migration of Negroes to the northern cities, as well as the more or less temporary seasonal immigration of Mexican and Puerto-Rican farm laborers, has played a similar role. A more detailed, though summary discussion of social mobility in the United States is contained in Reinhard Bendix and S. M. Lipset, “Power and the Elites in American Society,” to be published.

¹⁹ In postwar Germany, for example, in the field of industrial relations the trade unions and the employers' associations seem to have resumed where they had left off in 1933. Witness the request from the unions to the Military Government authorities to allow the reorganization of the employers, a request which was based presumably on the desire to have somebody with whom to bargain. It was obviously difficult for the German trade unionists to adopt another pattern of collective bargaining and benefit from the temporary absence of employers' organizations. Cf. Kerr, Clark, “Collective Bargaining in Postwar Germany”, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 5, pp. 323–342 (April, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In other respects, major changes in the German class structure have taken place. Some of these are described in Wiese, Leopold von, “Soziale Sicherheit und Sozialer Aufstieg als Probleme Unserer Zeit”, Soziale Welt, Vol. 1, pp. 3–13 (April, 1950)Google Scholar.

²⁰ We speak of movements as distinct from parties and interest organizations in order to designate their revolutionary, extra-legal characteristics.

²¹ What a successful communist revolution would be like in a country of advanced industrialization we are as yet unable to say. Although this statement is apparently contradicted by the case of Czechoslovakia, I would suggest that in this instance the population was so united in its opposition to the Germans that it momentarily greeted the Russians as liberators. The problems involved certainly illustrate the decided limitation of a study of political power which would base itself exclusively on an analysis of social stratification. While it is possible that peasant discontent is a major factor which explains communist success in agrarian countries, it is probable that a more or less disguised Russian intervention, rather than the internal social structure of the country, would account for such a development in an industrialized country.

²² See for example, the theory of fascism as a populist, middle-class movement in Saposs, D. J., “The Role of the Middle Class in Social Development”, in Economic Essays in Honor of Wesley C. Mitchell (New York, 1935), pp. 393–424Google Scholar. The same thesis is discussed, albeit with psychoanalytic adumbrations, by Lasswell, H. D., “The Psychology of Hitlerism as a Response of the Lower Middle Class to Continuing Insecurity”, in his The Analysis of Political Behavior (London, 1949), pp. 235–245Google Scholar.

²³ All election statistics are based on Dittman, Wilhelm, Das Politische Deutschland vor Hitler (Zurich, 1945)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Arthur Dix estimates the number of newly eligible voters in 1930 as approximately 2.5 million, though he does not indicate his source. He also remarks that 1.5 million of the older voters died during 1928–1930, and that the loss of conservative votes may be attributed to this fact in part. My own figure of 1,758,234 new voters is derived by subtracting the total number of eligible voters in 1928 from the corresponding figure for 1930. It is clear, however, that this is a minimal figure which would be increased if the number of voters who had died during this period could be deducted as Dix suggests. See Dix, Arthur, Die Deutschen Reichstagswahlen, 1870–1930, und die Wandlungen der Volksgliederung (Tubingen, 1930), pp. 36Google Scholar.

²⁵ Presumably, the gain of the small middle-class parties and the Catholic Center accrued from both the Right and the Left, from those nationalists who feared the radicalism of the Nazis and the Communists and those liberals and socialists who wanted to bolster the middle-of-the-road parties during this crisis. The gain of the Communists probably resulted more from the increase of young voters than from a radicalization of liberals or socialists.

²⁶ That the new voters in 1930 were predominantly of middle-class origin has been suggested frequently, though no evidence is given to support this contention. See, for example, the article by Geiger, Theodor, “Panik im Mittelstand”, Die Arbeit, Vol. 7, esp. p. 648 (Oct., 1930)Google Scholar. Evidence is available, however, which suggests that political participation increases with education and income. See Tingsten, Herbert, Political Behavior (London, 1937), pp. 120–156Google Scholar, where studies from several countries are reviewed. Tingsten's conclusion is that “the analysis of the electoral participation of the different social classes has proved that as a rule the political interest grows with rising social standard” (ibid., p. 230).

²⁷ It should be added that the German public was thoroughly political, since the addition of 4.2 million new voters increased the percentage of voters from 75.6 (in 1928) to 82 (in 1930). From 1930–1933 participation in the elections increased further from 82 to 88.7 per cent.

²⁸ It is secondary in the sense that the mobilization of the apathetic and the young as voters and as party-activists comes first. For a detailed case study of one area, cf. Heberle, op. cit. (above n. 16), Ch. 3. Cf. also Loomis, Charles P. and Beagle, J. Allen, “The Spread of German Nazism in Rural Areas”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 11, pp. 724–734 (Dec., 1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A striking literary portrayal of the rural development is contained in the novel by Hans Fallada, Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben.

²⁹ Heberle, pp. 84–89. The influx of nonparticipants in 1928–1930 coincided with the radicalization of the nationalists, many of whom were probably members of the middle class. But the big shift of votes away from the parties of the Right and Center occurred in 1932 rather than in 1930. If we add all the lost and gained votes for the 1930 and 1932 elections, we find that all the parties between the Nazis and the Communists lost 2,691,688 votes in 1930, but 6,132,692 votes in 1932. Yet the 1930 election had 4,203,224 new voters, while the 1932 election had 1,925,883 new voters. It is apparent that the major increase of Nazi votes came from the new voters in 1930, while the major change in the votes of people in the middle class (and other social groups) occurred in 1932.

³⁰ The figures for Germany are taken from Gerth, H. H., “The Nazi Party”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 45, p. 527 (Jan., 1940)Google Scholar. The figures for Italy are taken from Finer, Herman, Mussolini's Italy (London, 1935), p. 143Google Scholar. Earlier data on the social composition of the German Social-Democratic Party are contained in Michels, Robert, “Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie”, Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. 23, esp. p. 509 (1906)Google Scholar. Figures for the social composition of the German Communist Party are quoted in Flechtheim, Ossip, Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Offenbach, 1948), p. 236Google Scholar.

³¹ An example of such unity has been discussed with reference to the American scene in Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, Reinhard, “Social Status and Social Structure”, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 2, pp. 230–233 (Sept., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² See the recent study by Lerner, Daniel, The Nazi Elite (Stanford, 1951)Google Scholar, in which the marginality of the Nazi leaders is analyzed in detail. Of course, the leaders of other mass movements have also been marginal, though perhaps in a different sense of the word. A comparative study of the leaders of mass movements would be very interesting. A first step in this direction is provided in Michels, Robert, “Historisch-Kritische Untersuchungen zum politischen Verhalten der Intellektuellen”, Schmoller's Jahrbuch, Vol. 57, pp. 29–56 (Dec., 1933)Google Scholar. Michels concludes his study with the following analysis: “Education is power. Yet only a modicum of intellectual qualities belong to the social dynamics of a political exercise of power. Other factors like energy, faith in oneself, knowledge of men have a far greater impact on the conquest of power and on its retention for a period of time. The influence of the intelligentsia on the masses remains, therefore, on the surface. Only if this influence is buttressed by objective conditions is it likely to foster political movements which produce profound changes in the social structure” (ibid., p. 56—my translation).

³³ The importance of these three factors for the rise of fascism was pointed out 21 years ago, though the voluminous literature on this subject has largely ignored the first and second factor. I refer to the article by Mierendorff, Carl, “Gesicht und Charakter der National-Sozialistischen Bewegung”, Die Gesellschaft, pp. 489–504 (1930)Google Scholar. The preceding analysis was written before I chanced upon this article, but I want to pay tribute to the insight of this courageous man, who clearly understood the danger long before events proved him to have been correct. Mierendorff helped to prepare the 1944 revolt against Hitler, but was killed in a bombing attack.

³⁴ These are the factors which distinguish, for example, communist from socialist parties: not the social composition of their members, which is largely working-class, nor the origin of their leaders, which is largely bourgeois, in both capes. Cf. the discussion in Rossi, A., A Communist Party in Action (New Haven, 1949), pp. 193–233Google Scholar.

³⁵ This transformation of the civilian into a “true believer” has been analyzed with great insight by Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer (New York, 1951)Google Scholar. The presence of an effective organization in the Germany of 1929 and the threat which it presented owing to the influx of new voters was already analyzed by Mierendorff, pp. 498-501. Corresponding analyses for Italy are contained in Silone, Ignazio, Der Faschismus (Zurich, 1934), pp. 75–95Google Scholar; Michels, Robert, Sozialismus und Faschismus in Italien (Munich, 1925), pp. 189–250Google Scholar, although these and other studies (such as Rossi's The Rise of Italian Fascism) still attempt to explain fascism in terms of social stratification.

³⁶ Tingsten, op. cit. (above, n. 26), pp. 225–226.

³⁷ See Henry W. Ehrmann, “The Decline of the Socialist party,” and Lorwin, Val R., “The Struggle for Control of the French Trade-Union Movement, 1945–1949”, in Earle, E. M. (ed.), Modern France (Princeton, 1951), pp. 181–218Google Scholar.

³⁸ “On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpenproletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section being led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed roués with doubtful means of subsistence and of doubtful origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jail-birds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gambiers, procurers, brothel-keepers, porters, literati, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars, in short the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass thrown hither and thither, which the French term La Boheme” (Marx, , The Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 65)Google Scholar.

³⁹ See Michels, Robert, “Zur Soziologie der Boheme und ihrer Zusammenhaenge mit dem geistigen Proletariat”, Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik, Vol. 136, pp. 801–816 (June, 1932)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ A brilliant discussion of two of these groups is contained in Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951), pp. 92–120Google Scholar, with reference to the Anti-Dreyfusards, and pp. 320–326, with reference to the nihilist and nationalist German intellectuals of the post-World War I generation.

⁴¹ This is not to deny the great value of the excellent study by Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Sanford, Nevitt, and Levinson, D., The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, but I question the assertion that people of authoritarian character are “potential fascists” (p. 1).

⁴² Dr. Else Brunswik has coined the phrase “intolerance of ambiguity,” which indeed characterizes these people as few other single phrases do. For a brief delineation of this character structure, see Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, “A Study of Prejudice in Children”, Human Relations, Vol. 1, pp. 295–306 (1948)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Maslow, A. H., “The Authoritarian Character Structure”, Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 18, pp. 401–411 (1943)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ See Fromm, Erich, Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941)Google Scholar for the most comprehensive attempt in this respect.

⁴⁴ Though even this may be doubtful, since authoritarianism can take many forms. See, for example, the telling study of Jane, Cecil, Liberty and Despotism in Spanish America (Oxford, 1929)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ A more detailed discussion of this psychological analysis is contained in the authors' “Compliant Behavior and Individual Personality,” to be published in the American Journal of Sociology.